How Long is A 10000 Meter Race

Elite distance runners rely more on aerobic and anaerobic metabolism at different points in the race, and this shift in emphasis is a crucial part of their performance.

How Long is A 10000 Meter Race

Given that more than half of the race is conducted on curves, this research aims to model 10,000 m championship performances in order to better understand the elements impacting running speed and to establish the effect of the curves on performance.

Since most time split data is averaged across 100-m or 1,000-m segments, we replicate the performances of two 10,000-m runners to gain insight into their instantaneous speed, propulsive force, and anaerobic energy.

How Long is A 10000 Meter Race

We can examine the precise impact of settings affecting race strategy, tiredness, and acceleration into and around corners thanks to the data provided by the simulations. In particular, an athlete with poor running economy may have to rely on anaerobic energy to keep pace, leading to a lack of acceleration near the finish of the race.

Running slower on the bends is more common than on the straights, which makes sense given that maintaining the same pace around a bend uses more energy than running the same distance on the straights.

Coaches are reminded that athletes who refrain from mid-race surges can improve their endspurt, the deciding factor in tightly contested championship races, even though it is recommended that they adopt the accepted practises of improving aerobic and anaerobic metabolism through appropriate training methods.

Introduction

When it comes to track events in the Olympics and World Athletics Championships, the 10,000-meter race is the longest. An equal pacing profile, as observed in bicycle time trials, is most likely to result in the best finishing time for an endurance event, such as a triathlon (Padilla et al., 2000).

The men’s 10,000-meter world record was recently achieved with the use of specially-prepared pacemakers and a lighting system, the Wavelight pacing technology, which was programmed to show the even pace of the previous record (World Athletics, 2020a). Championship races, on the other hand, when the top athletes in the world only care about the outcome, have a far more variable pace that reflects tactical decision-making (Casado et al., 2020a).

World-class athletes nevertheless incur a high energetic cost from the strains on their physiological systems even when they are not racing at their maximum sustainable speed. Oxygen uptake (VO2), in particular in relation to an individual’s maximal oxygen update (Jones et al., 2020), running economy (Lucia et al., 2008), and anaerobic reserve, most clearly reflected in the faster speeds experienced during the endspurt, are among the most important factors affecting performance in distance running (Billat et al., 2003).

The majority of a 10,000-meter race is completed at a pace slower than the crucial speed, which is the speed above which discrete, predominately non-oxidative exercise is conducted (Burnley and Jones, 2010). The goal of a good pacing plan is to use up all of your energy reserves (whether from aerobic or anaerobic metabolism) by the time the race is through, but not so much that you start slowing down too drastically (Foster et al., 2004; Thiel et al., 2012).

Using data from 100-meter splits, Hettinga et al. (2019) demonstrated that the fastest men in the Olympic and World Championship 10,000 m races kept changing their pace during the race, with the top runners able to pull ahead of the pack after the 8,000-meter mark.

However, they were unable to take any physiological measurements, therefore variables like VO2 during outdoor exercise were calculated using mathematics (Péronnet and Thibault, 1989).

Because of this, a novel study that analyses the effects of the elements affecting performance in the 10,000 m would greatly advance our understanding of what differentiates superior performances and advise coaches of proper training strategies.